Jareth, just after we rescued him

I cancel plans with Sarah T, telling her I am going to stick around to hang out with Jareth, who has been sick. I text her a picture for proof, as though it can show anything. She tells me he is cute, and she understands, as she is tired and wants to stay home anyway.

I pet him. He purrs like crazy, but he doesn't want to move. I feel his bones through his skin. His eyes are red and irritated. I try to give him a little to eat, but he turns his face away.

Never have I cried so much, my face pressed on a bathroom floor, my hand inside the cat carrier petting Jareth and telling him how much I love him, how he is my little boy and always will be. I want to bargain to extend his happy life, but there is no force interested in that conversation.

In the last few days, I've wanted to cry whenever I am home, but I can't much around Amber. It steals from her the opportunity to process, because then she must console me, and it sets off her own sobbing. I don't want to be selfish in my crying. She is being stronger than I am because she has to be. I wibble my lip when I cannot get the cat to eat -- and I largely cannot, though I feel marvelous when he takes a few bites before abandoning the dish. Amber will restrain and forcible pill and feed the cat. She takes him to his appointments, convenient as she works at the vet's office. She makes appointments for him, and she won't make appointments for herself to get checkups or dental cleanings. She wakes at 3AM to feed him, since sick cats are hungry then, when fellow predators are least likely to see them as prey.

Jareth had been sick for a week, but so had almost every mammal in our home, including me. Amber attributed it to mycoplasma brought into our home by one of our new rats. She put everyone between 1 and 150 pounds on antibiotics, Jareth of course included. He has feline leukemia, and so is more likely to feel infections and have a harder time fighting them off. We had been great about keeping him inside and healthy. This was maybe an upper respiratory infection. He had been to the vet. It would be fine.

He kept refusing to eat, but he was always finicky. Amber had spoon-fed him for months, because he would refuse to acknowledge food that wasn't put under his nose. The cat enjoyed forcing us to spend time serving him. He behaved much like a toddler at times, which is why Amber had long since taken to calling him Baby Cat.

I knew, once we got his diagnosis of feline leukemia, that we likely would not have him ten years. Miracles can happen. Feline leukemia is not like human leukemia. The immune system is less able to stop or recover from infections, but it isn't cancer proper. We made him an indoor cat, justifying spoon-feeding him, and he was happy.

Amber came home around nine. Jareth had been in for tests earlier in the week and she got back the initial results that day.

She is sad but composed. "It says he might have lymphoma. We'll have to do more test tomorrow, but it looks like that."

She then went downstairs to try to feed the kitten, resting on our towels. I immediately googled, thinking that lymphoma might mean something different to cats than humans, like leukemia did. It is then that the numbers flash at me.

Untreated - four weeks
Steroids - four months
Chemotherapy - six to nine months

Those statistics are for otherwise healthy cats, which Jareth is not.

When I saw "remission" in the article, I felt excited, then I saw that their remission doesn't last. The parts of the cancer that weren't killed by the remission come back stronger. You can't excise the cancer because it's in all the lymph nodes.

There is no surviving this. In humans, the goal is the eradication of the disease. We will give up our hair and eyelashes, be sick and skeletal for a year, so we can come out the other side possibly cancer-free. With cats, chemotherapy puts the cancer into remission for a while. It gives them a higher quality of life while we can.

I don't hold out much hope that the cat doesn't have lymphoma. It does seem like the likeliest diagnosis when I look at the symptoms and see he matches every one.

We met him in late July, when he was still very young. We have not reached his birthday. There is no sureness we will.

I walk down the stair, where Amber is patiently feeding the cat, and tell her what she already knows. Then I breakdown crying, cradling the kitten's head in my hand to his satisfaction. Amber, the secret out, joins me in weeping. I had been building up in her since she found out, but she was at work and had to be stoic.

"I want to put him to get chemotherapy. The animal hospital could give him steroids, could treat him there, but he wouldn't live as long. Do you think that's the right thing to do?"

I tell her of course it is, because she chose it. She knows the risks and the possibilities. She knows Jareth. Of course, it is.

I want chemotherapy to happen immediately. I don't want to have to wait for an appointment when each day counts for so much.

When we found out he has feline leukemia, I thought the doctors were going to tell us that he had to be put down soon. They didn't. Feline leukemia isn't a death sentence, but it is the ink in the pen, ready to sign to order. It is what made him weak enough that the lymphoma could take hold. It is what will make it harder for him to fight to live. I told myself that, knowing he had feline leukemia, I would make sure to love him even more because our time would likely be abbreviated. I didn't think it would be this much. I didn't think we might not even get a year with him. He was a kitten when we made him ours, and in a sense always remained a kitten, even as he grew sleeker and taller.

When we got the kitten, before we knew about the leukemia, Amber had these grand notions of training him to be on the harness. We would take him hiking with us and go on camping trips. It was such a beautiful picture, him nuzzling us in our tent, gnawing on bits of fire-grilled chicken. Then we received his first diagnosis. That future that Amber was talking up vanished. The kitten can't be out like that. If he got a cut or if he God forbid got bitten by something, he couldn't fight it off. We kept him in the house. Then he got sick anyway, and so quickly. He lost weight, and he was never a fat cat. He's never going to be a fat, healthy cat. If he's not eating he's going to get skinnier and weaker. I stroke his back, feeling each individual ridge of his vertebrae.

"When I weighed him recently, he was 8.5 pounds," Amber said. "The last time I weighed him, he was 7."

He's such a small cat. He always has been. Holding him, feeling the prominence of his hips, his ribs, made my stomach turn. He cannot spare a pound and a half.

From the minute we knew he had feline leukemia, we started considering. I'm so used to holding him in my arms, and there is palpably less now. Everything nauseates him or his throat closes or he can't smell the food. I'm not sure why he won't eat. Maybe all these. I know that he's who he should be still. The lymphoma hasn't touched how much he loves us. We looked at him and he starts purring.

I asked Amber the other day if having earned her vet tech degree and working in an animal hospital had made it better when it came to our pets being sick. After a pause, she explained the ways that it was maybe better, which meant it was much worse. She did know everything that was going on whereas I could have some rime of ignorance, just that the kitty is sick. Amber likely knew he could have lymphoma, but she reasonably didn't tell me this. She wanted my misplaced hope that he had an aggressive cold.

I knew our time with Jareth would likely be abbreviated, but I assumed it would be more generous. We took fed him like he was a feline prince, we bought him a sweater he loves and a harness he hates except that it lets him go outside, gave him medical care until he could barely stand it. It wasn't enough. Cancer didn't care. I don't think we could have done anything to prevent this. Maybe we could have discovered it sooner, though not by much. We knew he wasn't feeling well.

When I call my mother, in my bathrobe, pacing my front porch as it rains, she posits that the original owner knew that the kitten had feline leukemia and didn't want to deal with watching him die, or the expense of forestalling it. He was too young for this to be the case, and too spry. I don't know how he happened to have feline leukemia, though it is a fair bet that he got it from his mother. He wasn't the victim or perpetrator of vicious and bloody street fights. Even my snarling, territorial cat loved and gamboled with him on first sight. Jareth even tried to make friends with raccoons and foxes, though we put a stop to that.

I smell the lavender of his purple calming collar and know I will associate this with him for a long time. This is Jareth's smell, overpowering what is organic in a cat. I have a kitten who always smells of fake flowers.

It is all a matter of gambles. The cat has swollen eyes, a half-opened mouth, pronounced lymph nodes, prominent bones. Giving him steroids might relieve this and would make him eat. If we did that, we couldn't take him to the oncologist to get assessed. We endure the kitten creeping toward death for a chance to get him prescribed chemo. On chemotherapy, depending on the article I read, he could live for between six and thirty months. Those ranges are from different articles, one saying six to nine, the other nine to thirty. As he is, given that he has feline leukemia, I am too realistic to assume full remission. We are gambling for six months, not close to three years. With steroids alone, he could live around four months, again optimistically. Without any treatment, he would be dead within the month. Given how he looks and acts right now, I would bump that down a few weeks. Right now, we are not treating him for this. He is on the "dying in a month" path until we can get to the oncologist and get better advice. We are gambling for the best outcome when we could get a good outcome now. Maybe we won't get there fast enough. That is a possibility. Maybe giving him chemotherapy will overwhelm his body and will be the thing that kills him.

We can't save his life. Each successful remission makes the next one much harder to achieve. We could get two, maybe three, and then the drugs won't work anymore. As he is immunocompromised, Jareth might have a hard time finding each remission. He might not be able to get to the first one, but I am not yet pessimist enough to acknowledge that.

I keep envisioning unrequested having to put him down, the impossibility of that. I don't think I can do it, but I can't have him suffering. I don't know that he is suffering right now, just tired and not able to force himself to eat. I don't know what real suffering will be for him. I am going to rely on Amber, who will do the difficult thing. She might ask me what we should do, but she will preface this by saying the decision she thinks is right.

He is innocent, coddled, loving, and sweet. In a better world, that would matter.

In the morning, I am torn between wanting to eat nothing, because nothing matters, and eating everything, because nothing matters. If he can't eat, I don't want to eat. Food is sustenance, not pleasure.

His brother is so fat since we had him neutered. I wish I could transfer some of it.

I have always loved the cat's face. It is so sleek. He never stopped having a kitten face, even after we had him neutered, when most cats get puffy faces. Now the lymphoma has distorted it. One side of his mouth is pushed out with an aggravated gland. Or is it a tumor, so fast growing? He has other lumps. Despite how horrified I am by touching bodily lumps, even when the lumps reside inside my own body, I have no qualms with feeling these so that I can better know if they have grown or shrunk.

It is as if, now that we know, the disease feels the liberty of speeding up its progress. We've been formally introduced to the bastard killing our baby.

Before the diagnosis, I bought a huge can of tuna, intending him to give him a little, which I did the night before. Considering lunch, I take the container out, then yell at myself for being so selfish to think I could make a sandwich from Jareth's tuna. What the hell is wrong with me?

I tell Amber that I've never experienced something like this. She reminds me that we only recently lost Pico. I must think only a moment to explain how I thought that was different: Pico might have lived. Through Amber's ministrations and the intervention of her animal hospital, we could figure out some clever treatment that would extend his precious life. Amber kept coming up with possibilities, none of which sounded fatal in isolation. I was wrong, and there was nothing Amber could do, and she tried far more than most would.

With Pico, to the end I could have that hope. With Jareth, I am denied. I am told that he has a nearby death and we can maybe forestall this, but I don't think it will be long. I don't get to assume that we will pull it back, somehow. I may hope to lessen his symptoms for a while. My goal is to prevent hearing some doctor suggest soon it is nigh about time to consider putting him down, or to find him breathless and cold after waking or after work. Those are the two outcomes.

Pico was different because he was small and, though we loved him, he was a pet. Jareth is more than that. My therapist, before this happened, referred to him as Amber's baby given how she coddled and petted him. Jareth was not a pet or wasn't a pet for long. Once he was diagnosed with feline leukemia, he became a burden we gladly carried, which is one of the better reasons to consider someone family.

Because Jareth demanded so much from us, our care and attention, he became a focus of our lives. He always rewarded us with unquestioning affection. There has never been an animal in my life that loved me this much. There are few humans who have. There was never a time Jareth was surly or angry, even when Amber had to hold him down to administer pills. We were his favorite people and, aside from a few parties and seeing our neighbors when allowed to play in the front yard, we were among the few he ever got to meet. The staff of the animal hospital, too, loved him, and they were right to.

He is itchy. He scratches often, as though he has acquired fleas. Amber finds an article that tells her that lymphoma makes cats itchy, though it specifies that itchy cats do not necessarily have lymphoma. It is such a petty symptom. "Oh, I am going to inflate your lymph nodes, kill your appetite, make you lethargic and depressed, and -- by the way -- you will be itchy." The itching is the cancer, or his immune system trying to fight it. I don't get clarification on which phrasing is the most correct.

I tell Melanie that I want from her the emotional labor of consoling me. She is wonderful and sympathetic. She understands what it is to be loved by an animal, and to lose them. I show her pictures, going from when he was a random stray that took to playing with our cat to his rescue from the animal hospital to parties to Christmas. He was so healthy and normal even a week ago. This is all impossibly fast to me. Is the momentum too great to arrest?

Never have I watched a cat so intently as he used the litterbox so I could report the process to Amber.

This is a huge stress. I want to take care of Amber, who is taking care of the kitten better than I can, but then I burst out crying. I can't stop myself. I do not want to hurt Amber by being destroyed. This is the hardest thing we have ever faced as a couple.

I can't mourn him every day until he passes. Right now, I feel so depressed that it's like I have the flu. I don't feel capable of joy for anything. I watch comedy videos to trick myself into being happy, but I don't want to do anything. It's all forced, and I can't focus.

He has been one of the best cats I've ever known. I am aggressively not ready to let him go. He is so sweet and so caring. He just wants to be held and he wants to love us.

In my daily life, I try to limit the intrusive thoughts or the over-planning. At this point, I can't stop imagining the likeliest things to happen. I can't conjure up a doctor telling us the others were mistaken and he just needs a course of antibiotics to be fine.

I don't want to have to imagine the day we have to put him down, if we do. I both want to have nothing to do with it and want to be there in his final moments so he knows how much we love him. Kit-Kat came to us grown, though thin and half-feral. The kitten we had since he was small. We raised him. He was ours more than Kit-Kat, who was just sharing a space with us for most of his time in our lives.

I don't know who I can talk to about this. It seems so small to people. He is something we care a great deal about. He is a part of our daily lives and has higher maintenance than Kit-Kat ever has. He's always been the sweetest little thing.

When you have cradled something in your arms as it hugs and kisses you, it is impossible to reduce that down to some fungible beast. No cat can ever be Jareth. But I do understand how unimportant the death of a cat is to the world. Personally tragic, utterly devastating, but societally irrelevant. I can't have them understand that I am not concerned about the loss of some aloof and indifferent creature. The "Hey, that's rough, buddy" from someone trying to console me is worse than saying nothing.

Humans know what chemotherapy is and they'll go aggressively, but the kitten only knows if he's happy or not happy. We want to make him happy. He won't understand what's going on at any point. He'll just know that he doesn't want to eat food or he wants to eat food. No matter what we do, he never can understand. Maybe that's a blessing, because I know what's happening and it guts me. I want his light to be as bright as can be.

I sat on the bathroom floor with him and he had no idea why I was making sounds that I was making. The cat doesn't understand that this hurts us because he doesn't understand what this is. He can't read our emotions. He only knows that we love him and that his brother loves him.

Cats can read our emotions, but only to the extent that they react more fondly when their owners are smiling; they don't care about sadness. Indeed, both the cats only prick up their ears that I am wailing. They are indifferent about why. Even the healthy cat doesn't care to be comforting, walking away because the sounds I am making are annoying.

My mother tells me to take lots of pictures of Jareth, but I don't want to chronicle his descent. I have dozens of pictures of him vivacious. I have taken a few of him looking sickly and tired, his eyes infected, his mouth parted. He doesn't understand why I am doing this. I don't know why either.

I talk a good game about how we've rescued these animals from a likely or definite death, so any time that they have on this Earth is bonus. They wouldn't have the life they have right now. The hamster is an exception. The new rats are exceptions too, but the kitten is one of my friends. I love him, and his death is going to be long. There's wiggle room there. I know that Amber is going to go as far as she can to take care of him, farther than almost anyone else would.

The night he comes out from under the drunkenness of sedation, he devours a plate of wet and dry food. I feel heartened. Eating is health, is restoring vitality to him. Eating might restore to him a little of his precious fat. Amber tells me that this is the side effect of tealizole: it makes you ravenous. I ask if we can keep dosing him with that until he can see the oncologist, but it is a sedative and we cannot.

I fumble making dinner, turning easy fried flounder into a mess where the breading won't stick. There is a whole process to my life that ordinarily works without hesitation, which is now stunted. All I can think about it is the well-being of this cat.

After sobbing on the floor for the third time that day, Amber and I go to the grocery store to get another cat food she has researched. We have so many cans and pouches, and I would buy ten times that amount right now if I thought it would make my kitten feel better. Once we have purchased them, I walk away, as does Amber. She turns back before the sliding glass doors, remembering that we must take our purchases with us.

I am not fully here right now.

A week ago, Amber suggested I use my last personal day to go to see a movie with her mother at a new, fancy theater. Now, it seems so trivial. Shouldn't I be using that day to take my cat for chemotherapy? Of course, we need an appointment first.

I tell Amber that she can give me tasks to do in the house or things I can do to make her life easier right now. She says I don't have to, but I tell her it would be a mercy. I show her how I tested each of the hundreds of pens we have accumulated, sorting them into piles of usefulness. I need to be doing something to slow the time until I must confront the dread. I need to think about something other than my kitten's looming death.

I talk to Amber about this when she gets home, how nothing feels good anymore. How I feel anhedonic, incapable of finding pleasure in things. I try, but it is all so irrelevant and boring. I want to be holding my kitty and have him be robust. How can I enjoy chocolate or weekends if I am thinking of someone I love dying and being unable to stop it?

Soon in Xenology: Social Justice Wiccans. Jareth.

last watched: American Gods
reading: Aliens: The World's Leading Scientists on the Search for Extraterrestrial Life
listening: Damien Rice